Citation

This profile was prepared when Ajit Singh was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship in 2016.

The New Idea

In order to increase the quality of skilled youth workforce in India, Ajit Singh believes that it is imperative to introduce transparency and robust monitoring and evaluation systems into the currently existing employment linked skill development programmes . Ajit, through Anant Learning and Development, is introducing the transparency and accountability measures along the entire skill development value chain – between various government agencies and its formal skill training partners, between the training partners and the candidates who underwent training, and between the job seekers and the employers.

Ajit is demonstrating to employer companies that they can increase productivity and reduce attrition by employing those workers that have come through a transparent and accountable skill training and placement system, and by providing the workers social security and a healthy working environment. As employers start demanding employees that have come through Ajit’s ethical skill training and placement platform, this is creating a pull in the sector for the skill training value chain to abide by transparency and accountability measures.

Ajit’s operational systems are built with the combination of a strong field team and simple scalable technology services like call centres, websites and SMS based applications, giving him access and helping him penetrate to the most rural parts of India.

The Problem

India has a largest youth population in the world- 350 million young people, who make up 41% of India’s population (UN Report, 2014). However, only 4.69% of this population has undergone any sort of formal skill training. Recent skill gap reports suggest that 93% of India’s workers are in the unorganised sector and acquire skills through informal channels.

To counter this, the government has set aside a budget of 25 Million USD this year to fund 1500 multi-­‐skill training institutes across the country that will train 10 million young people over the next three years. However, the loopholes and lack of accountability within the various skill development programmes has paved the way for unethical practices, with skill training partners and assessment agencies often manipulating data and illegally passing unskilled candidates for financial gains. This shows that there is an urgent need for transparency and robust evaluation systems in the formal skill training sector.

There is also a lack of transparency in the job placement process after skill training, leading to mismatch in expectations between the candidate seeking employment and the employer. Job seekers from rural areas are frequently allured into accepting employment by middle-men under false conditions due to the absence of a formal employment agreement. The majority of the job seekers that fall into the trap of worker exploitation are the migrant skill workers from rural parts of India.

For instance, a naïve job seeker from the rural part of the country, after having been promised a base salary of 150$ a month, would often find the salary offered to be only 100$ on reaching the job location. He or she is then forced to work in an unfamiliar urban environment for a nominal salary, with no one to seek help or assistance from. This eventually leads to cases of worker exploitation, and a high attrition rate, leaving both the job seeker and the employer thoroughly dissatisfied. There are currently no formal agencies that protect the interests of these workers and neither are there formal agencies that provide reliable skilled workers to those who want to formally employ them.

The Strategy

When most other organizations are merely engaged in providing skill training services to young job seekers, Ajit recognizes that this was not leading to higher employment. The quality of training was not good enough to ensure them employment. Where they were employed, an expectation mis-match between the employer and employee and an unfriendly job environment were resulting in the youth dropping out of job before completing their first 3 months.

Ajit is using technology and data collection as powerful mediums to introduce transparency into the skill development ecosystem and to better connect the job seekers with suitable employers. Ajit is developing robust systems along the entire skill development value chain by conducting assessments of the candidates undergoing skill development courses, tracking and getting feedback from candidates who have been trained and ensuring that candidates find suitable placement post-training.

To tackle the issue of assessment agencies operating in a non-transparent way, Ajit has developed a unique approach of assessing candidates by using an interactive question and answer module on a mobile device to assess the skill level of candidates. The collected data is immediately sent to the data processing team in real-time feeds to improve the transparency in the assessment process, thus reducing the scope for unethical means in the system. By making the test mobile, it makes it possible for a candidate to take the assessment at the location where he/she is based, and also gives Ajit access to conduct assessments even in the interior parts of India. Ajit has partnered with the Agriculture Skill Council, an autonomous industry-led body by the NSDC, and conducted over 40,000 assessments across 19 states in 9 regional languages. Ajit is currently trying to reach out to the other 39 other Sector Skill Councils, such as retail, tourism, and telecom to expand his assessment reach.

Ajit has also developed a robust monitoring and evaluation system of tracking down candidates who have completed skill training, to check if they are satisfied with both the training provided and the placement post-training. As per Ajit’s tracking system, an Anant Field Officer meets a candidate who has completed skill training, and documents several details such as, duration of the skill training provided, effectiveness of the training, relevance of the training to the current employment situation, and current job satisfaction level. This whole process is captured via a technology platform, and the candidate’s identity details are also captured with the biometric data and photo identification to show the authenticity of the data. The collected data is then shared with the government agencies to assess the on-ground effectiveness of the training agencies and the satisfaction levels of the candidates who underwent skill training. The challenges that the candidates face, surface during this tracking process and becomes an opportunity for the government agencies to rectify the situation. Cases of worker exploitation – long working hours, physical abuse in workplace, and inhumane working conditions – are common feedback given by candidates.

In Feb 2013, the Bihar Government asked Ajit to track the effectiveness of two randomly chosen training agencies – one training agency claimed a 100% placement record, and the other a 60% placement record. After Ajit and his team finished the tracking of 250 candidates who had supposedly attended the training, a shocking 98% of them said that they hadn’t even been trained, let alone placed. Next, the Odisha Government gave a project to Ajit to use his tracking mechanism to track 500 candidates in 3 months. The results showed a stark 55% placement record, well below the stipulated 75%. The Odisha Government has now contracted Ajit to track down candidates for a whole year.

While interviewing and tracking candidates, Ajit began to get several job placement queries from dissatisfied or unemployed candidates. So he set out to build a placement platform called Rozgarmela that connected job seekers and employers directly. The Rozgarmela system, job seekers call the helpline number or visit the website, provide their registration details, and state their job expectations such as such preferred location of work, preferred salary, and food and accommodation preference. An assessment is then conducted to map out their competencies and they are then matched with potential employers. The candidate receives an SMS for every job that matches their selection criteria and then they can choose whether to apply or not to apply for it. Ajit uses career counsellors to guide job seekers on career decisions so that the seeker is well aware of the work environment, job description and salary, and is in a position to make an informed choice of employment. At present, he is serving close to 2000 job seekers, created a network of 100 employers, and registers close to 400 job enquiries a day in his call centre. To ensure that job seekers and employer are satisfied with their selection, Ajit’s call centre makes post-placement calls to both the employer and the employee to verify if both the parties are satisfied with the arrangement. This way, the Rozgarmela system becomes a holistic placement platform, creating a win-win scenario for all.

Ajit realized that the biggest pain-points for employers is worker unproductivity and attrition. He is proposing a solution for these problems in order to change the mindsets of employer companies. Ajit is placing employees with them who have come through the transparent and accountable skill training system he has built through assessments, tracking and Rozgarmela to demonstrate that these employees are much more productive because their skill set is a perfect match for the job. As more and more employers are demanding workers who have come through this ethical skill training chain, this is creating a pull for skill training and placement agencies to abide by the accountability systems developed by Ajit. While the employers don’t have to legally provide any social security to blue collar informal sector contract workers, Ajit is formalizing employment for them by getting employers to sign an MoU stating that they will give employees insurance cover, salary slips, a formal work agreement, health benefits, and guarantee fair treatment at the workplace. Through this Ajit has demonstrated a sharp drop in worker attrition, and employer companies are now willingly providing these benefits to even their informal sector workers.

Ajit also developed an Android based application called Mazdoor Adda currently active in three cities. All the informal sector workers in these cities are being registered on this platform and are being connected to potential work opportunities using technology. Mazdoor Adda app not only connects workers to the potential work opportunities but also supports these informal sector workers with social security and training. So far he has been able to register more than 3000 workers and is currently looking at expanding the operations to more urban areas.

The Person

As an infantry officer with the Indian Armed Forces, Ajit served in various locations across the country. When the Kargil war broke out between India and Pakistan in 1999, Major Ajit Singh was ordered to make a near-­‐suicidal attempt to retake point 5000 in Dras, Kashmir. After the hostilities ended Ajit was posted as a Group Testing Officer at Services Selection Board, Bangalore where he was responsible for selecting officers for the Indian Army.

Ajit opted out for early retirement and left the Indian Army in 2007 after completing 12 years of service. He came to Bangalore and built an offbeat adventure and travel company called the Nomads. After a few months, he moved on to take up the Head of Operations role at Humming Bird Suites Pvt Ltd , a hospitality start up funded by Helion Ventures. After completing 2 years in the hospitality industry Ajit relocated to Delhi and joined BASIX Academy for Building Lifelong Employability (B-ABLE) India, the skill building arm of BASIX India, founded by Senior Ashoka Fellow, Vijay Mahajan.

After working at B-ABLE for one and a half years, he felt that it was not translating into enough economic livelihood opportunities for the beneficiaries so he quit his job and took some time to completely understand the skill development ecosystem to identify where the gaps in the system were and engaged with multiple organisations/NGOs as a consultant.

Later, Ajit joined a skill development company, as General Manager of Operations. The Ministry of Rural Development had given this company a 100 crore project to build skill training centres in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Jamshedpur. On visiting these sites on his field visit as the General Manager, Ajit realized that none of these sites were operational, and turned out to be just run-­‐down buildings. The system was corrupt, and he decided to discharge all the people who were given the responsibility of running the centres. Ajit spent the next 3 months re-activating all the centres and getting transparent systems and processes in place. He was able to reinstate the confidence of government officers and the beneficiaries in the overall functioning of the company. In 2012 he quit this company because of the re-emergence of sheer scale of corruption within the organization and moved on to start Anant Learning and Development in 2013.